Friday, March 25, 2016

Negan and The Walking Jihadists

Who or what is
“Negan”?

Negan is a vile, evil character
who will debut in April at the end of Season Six of The
Walking Dead. Negan is a brutal tyrant who lords over an enclave of plague
survivors and likes to smash victims’ heads with a baseball bat sheathed in
barbed wire. He has a policy of extortion that requires other, productive
enclaves to give him half of what they have in exchange for his not raiding,
raping, enslaving, and killing their inhabitants and trashing their
communities.

As one of their
spokesmen said to others in an earlier teaser scene: “Everything you own now
belongs to Negan.” His group or gang is called The Saviors. Negan’s crew are
dedicated nihilists.

The comic book Negan, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Negan

Negan could be
taken as a metaphor for the Obama administration, or for Islamic jihadists.
Both entities are looters, plunderers, and destroyers.

Advisory: I am
not a “zombie” fan or aficionado by any means. Out of desperation to watch
anything of interest on Netflix, I tried the first episodes of The Walking Dead
and found them intriguing in the personal conflicts and character growth of
many of the characters. Nor am I enamored of the original and ongoing graphic
comics rendition of the series, written by Robert
Kirkman. The artwork in the comics is crude and without any redeeming value
whatsoever, and the storyline in the dialogue is banal, naturalistic, if not
repellant. Fortunately, the AMC TV series does not follow the graphic comics’
storyline.

The similarities
between Negan and his Savior underlings and Islam and Muslims are striking to
those observant enough to see the parallels and not afraid to point them out.
The Islamic Negan has been raiding, killing, and trashing Western societies for
decades. Note the latest raid in Brussels.
Often these Negan jihadists and invaders are invited into these societies for a
variety of political and economic reasons. Daniel Greenfield as Sultan Knish wrote, and
warned, in 2010, in his column, “Immigration
Jihad,” and the incremental and inevitable Islamization of Austria:

Where once upon a time Islamic
armies had to lay siege, plant gunpowder charges and finally breach the walls
in massive costly charges-- today they can simply hop a plane. And so what
started out as a few newspaper vendors, factory workers and janitors, morphed
into a full blown cultural invasion complete with a network of Islamic schools
where students are taught that Islam is incompatible with democracy, that
Muslims are superior to non-Muslims, and where 8.5 percent of the teachers
surveyed said that it is understandable when violence is used to spread Islam.
The pattern however is not limited to Vienna, it exists worldwide…..

But like any takeover in which
the enemy is allowed inside the gates, it could not happen without the active
collaboration of those on the inside. And they have their various motivations.
Left of center politicians and parties often expect that Muslim immigrants will
serve as a reliable voting base for them, and they are correct about that—in the
short term. Meanwhile more middle of the road pols see rising population
figures as a regional net benefit and a shot at elevating their own political
importance, without examining the consequences down the road. Companies are
always on the lookout for cheap labor, and particularly in countries and areas
with a low birth rate, there are always some dirty jobs that need doing. The
jobs that Americans, Austrians, Frenchmen, Israelis and Norwegians don't want
to do. But those same jobs are also part of the critical infrastructure of a
local economy. And by capturing them, they capture the base processes by which
the system exists.

The production
values of the TV series, however, are first-rate and profit from a first-class
cast, half of whose principal actors, one learns to one’s astonishment, are
British. Most of the characters are supposed to hail from twangy Georgia. But,
not a vowel of tea-and-crumpets escapes their dialogue.

However, in
literature, while there is a limited amount of malevolence one can accept in
fiction, it is not, or should not be, an unlimited feature; a continual
presence of evil or of a malevolent character or theme can dull one’s brain and
make one hostile to any and all values. In
a story, evil or malevolence must be defeated at some point and rendered
impotent. If it is not foiled and made powerless, but instead becomes a
continuous presence and theme in a story, then there is no point in
contemplating the story any further.

This is basically
the state of literature and art today. There is little respite from the malaise.
One finds relief where one can.

That is what is
going to happen in The Walking Dead, and when it does, off will go my screen.

The almost
drooling anticipation in many of the series’ fans of the debut of Negan in the
finale of Season Six of The Walking Dead, which I have been watching as a
dramatization of emergency ethics in an apocalyptic world, is not flattering to
those fans. I sense that the writers and directors of The Walking Dead are
going to at least partially pander to fans’ appetites for brutality and gore.
Which would mean that I stop watching the series.

Carol’s character
blossomed from a self-effacing housewife with a brute of a husband (who dies
early on) into an efficacious dreadnaught of a zombie fighter who finds values
to fight for outside of her formerly shrunken realm of domestic chores.

The character of
Daryl evolved from an ambiguous, loud-mouthed, back-country redneck to one of
moral certitude and honesty.

A bellwether
indication of the direction the series is taking now is in the character of Morgan
Jones, played by British actor and playwright, Lennie James, who in a
very long episode is depicted as being converted to some pacifist philosophy of
life – actually a martial art – Aikido,
by a recluse. It is called “The Art of Peace,” in which “All life is precious.”

Morgan encounters
the Wolves, looters
and killers. He easily defeats
them – but does not kill them – and leaves them unconscious in an abandoned
car, safe and sound. He encounters them again in a later episode, and again lets
them go, who go on to kill again. Because “all life is precious,” and the
killers can “change.”

What is the difference
between the Negans of fiction and the Negans of the real world? The fiction
will not kill you. The real ones can and will. As happened in Paris and
Brussels and New York City and dozens of other places over decades. There are
dozens of Koranic verses for violence
that the fictional Negans could just as well adopt, such as:

An Islamic Negan: Kill them, slay them, take what is theirs.

47:4:
“When you meet the unbelievers, smite their necks, then, when you have made
wide slaughter among them, tie fast the bonds; then set them free, either by
grace or ransom, till the war lays down its loads. So it shall be; and if Allah
had willed, He would have avenged Himself upon them; but that He may try some
of you by means of others. And those who are slain in the way of Allah, He will
not send their works astray.”

2:191-193: “And slay them wherever you
come upon them, and expel them from where they expelled you; persecution is
more grievous than slaying. But fight them not by the Holy Mosque until they
should fight you there; then, if they fight you, slay them — such is the
recompense of unbelievers, but if they give over, surely Allah is
All-forgiving,

Angela Merkel,
the French, the Swedes, the Danes, and other European countries welcomed the
hordes of barbarians into their countries because they believed that “all life
is precious.” Substitute Allah for “Negan” and you get the horrifying idea that
Muslims do not regard all life as precious, especially not the lives of
infidels. If Allah can will it, so can Negan. These are the Negan Jihadists.

1 comment:

I tend to think it's over for Western Europe. France is already 10% Muslim. There was a story on Jihad Watch that 25% of high school students in France are Muslim. I've heard people (including Objectivists) say the problem is that European countries don't "assimilate" Muslims, as if that's something that can be done against people's will. And an "assimilated' Muslim population in France would mean that 10% of the police are Muslims (and 10% of people responsible for baggage handling and security at airports are Muslim, etc.) In some sense, I'd rather them remain unasamilated.

A few weeks ago I read a story that a Somali baggage handler at the Minneapolis airport was arrested on terrorism charges (don't recall if it was related to the airport).

The countries in Eastern Europe are doing better, but most are members of the EU and the Shengen Zone. So Muslims in, say France or Germany, can freely move to the Czech and Slovakian republicans (if I understand things correctly).

If I had children I'd teach them Russian. Belorussia is 0.2% Muslim, according to Wikipedia.